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The Driest Month

I don’t remember exactly what it was that sparked this being an issue. Perhaps it was waking up with too many hangovers that knocked me out for days on end, perhaps it was the fact that I was waking up on the couch with no memory of the preceding night’s entertainment. I’m positive it has something to do with that time I arrived home at 5 in the morning with glitter all over my face after spending the early hours with it buried in the best parts of the wrong women at the infamous Pussy Cat Club.

Maybe it was a combination of all these things that led to me calling a time out and staying off of the sauce for the whole year. All 29 days of it. And if the truth be told it hasn’t been very hard to do. Now I’m coming to the end of my self imposed abstinence from the lunatic soup and I’m telling you all now, February is going to be a big month. I’m going to go out and get wasted in February. A lot. Because I don’t care that I’m a 35 year old married man with responsibilities.

I LIKE being drunk.

A month of sobriety might have made my liver feel better but that’s about all it seems to have done. Since I can’t feel my liver whether or not it feels better seems to strike me as being hardly relevant.

Anyway I digress.

As the month progressed so did the sneaking realisation that the reason alcohol, nicotine, weed, cocaine, anti-depressants and all of the rest of those other drugs are so popular is because being inside your own head all of the time, without anything artificial to relieve the pressure is, well, unnatural.

As time passes and the end of my goal falls into range I’m left feeling a little empty. Unlike letting go of the green herb I don’t really feel that stopping the boozing was worth it. Which is a bit of an anticlimax really. In fact the beginning of this little experiment was the easiest part, it’s now that there are only a few days left to go that I feel like it’s worth calling time and running off to my favourite boozer a bit early. Geula that semi mythical place where the lights are dim, cigarette smoke copious, barmaids of looser moral fibre, beer on tap and all kinds of whiskey on the shelf.

Of course it can’t be that simple. It couldn’t just be abstain from the hooch for a month and then go back to normal. The little voice inside has perked up and is asking “why go back?” Normally I’d shut it up with a chaser or two of Bushmills but right now I’m sober enough to listen to it.

“Is life really so bad without being wasted all the time?”

The little voice asks.

Unfortunately I’m afraid that it is.

I am afraid that this is as good as it gets, that without getting an incredibly large dose of the giggle juice every now and then I might completely flip out and do something crazy. Like getting a job. Like stopping writing as if my life depended on it.

Now that would surely be awful. A loss to the human race. The government says “drink responsibly”, I don’t see the point in that at all. If I was drinking something for the taste I’d have a Coke, or a milkshake, or any other drink that actually tastes good. Perhaps I’m old fashioned but I drink for the alcohol content.

So there we are ladies and gentlemen, after a month of abstinence from the poison the only conclusion I’ve come to is that I really like drinking and that I’m carrying on. Disappointing perhaps but the truth nevertheless.